


Hyperfocus

by HyperLittleNori (Shiguresan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alphas are like sentinels, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Domesticity, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Guide Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by The Sentinel, M/M, Sentinel Derek, Sentinels/Guides, Sort Of, The Sentinel fusion, partners, team work, working together, you don't have to have seen The Sentinel to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24259096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresan/pseuds/HyperLittleNori
Summary: Inspired by The Sentinel/Guide relationship, but you don’t have to have watched The Sentinel to read this.In a world where an alpha needs an emissary to ground them when their instincts, their heightened senses threaten to overwhelm them in stressful situations, Derek presents as an alpha and finds himself thrown in with the hyperactive, unfocussed sheriff’s kid. How could a kid who couldn’t even sit still be his guide? Be his emissary? How the hell could he help Derek adjust to being an alpha?
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 20
Kudos: 563





	Hyperfocus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [animegirl1776](https://archiveofourown.org/users/animegirl1776/gifts).



> **JUST A QUICK NOTE FOR READERS: You don’t have to have watched The Sentinel to read this fic.**
> 
> This is a gift fic/wish fic for Andrea who said: I don’t know if you still need/want any prompts, but maybe a Sentinel/Guide one. I like those, but there’s not a lot, or they’re unfinished.  
> This turned into more ‘the one where alpha werewolves are like sentinels and zone out when their senses go too hyper-focussed so they need a guide (emissary)’. I hope that’s okay Andrea! I love The Sentinel so I was so excited about this prompt. I had to try really hard to reign it in as it wanted to go off with a life of its own. I hope you enjoy it :)

**Hyperfocus**

The humans thought alphas gained their power through murdering or inheriting from another alpha. But some born wolves presented as alphas when they reached majority, like nature’s way of urging the purest blooded wolves to strike out on their own and grow a new pack, strengthen their species.

It sounded very clinical, like something from _The Discovery Channel_ to say it like that, but Derek _felt_ like something on _The Discovery Channel_ when it manifested in him. When he woke up with his body on fire from the heat within, skin so sensitive his sheets were like blankets of razorblades. The muted morning light through his closed blinds stabbed at his eyelids and the sound of his uncle cracking the eggs into the pan downstairs was like an explosion in his skull.

Derek had been born a werewolf, he’d grown up with heightened senses and learned to control them as readily as he’d learned to walk and talk, but presenting as an alpha was like a bomb going off inside him. When he’d screamed at the agony of it all, the sound had hurt so much that it’d consumed him, a blinding, immobilising whiteness that had frozen him in time, aware of only the ringing in his ears.

The next time he was aware of anything else, it was all quiet, dark in a soothing way that filled him with cool calmness. Like a breeze on a heavy summer’s night. He blinked slowly, looking around a room that was not his bedroom. It was a padded room with barely-there, soft, muted lights. His skin was sore, as if he were one big bruise but he didn’t feel as if his flesh was being burned away by the light blankets over him, his nostrils aflame with the scents of his own family home.

He could feel the smear of scent-blocking ointment spread just under his nose now, which explained why all he could get was the faintest whiff of aloe. He couldn’t hear anything, just a soft nothingness, white noise.

White noise.

It all clicked into place just as he focussed on the vaguely familiar shape at his bedside.

Slowly, he reached up and pulled the earbuds generating white noise out of his ears.

“Hey, big guy,” the boy beside him said, voice deeper than Derek had anticipated. He hadn’t actually spoken with the Sheriff’s kid for almost a year. Ever since things in Beacon Hills had calmed down, his mom and the Sheriff had had fewer reasons to meet as often.

A extremist anti-wolf group who dubbed themselves ‘hunters’ had plagued Beacon County when he was a kid, so Derek had often been in and out of the station at his mother’s side while she, the alpha of the territory worked with law enforcement. He’d often waited in the bustling bullpen, where _‘Stiles’_ Stilinski had delighted and irritated the staff in equal measures, his extended family.

At four years younger than Derek, he’d grated on his nerves just by breathing; caught between that annoying age between childhood and his teenage years where he wasn’t quite one or the other. His voice had broken since Derek had last seen him though, his babyish face hardening. He must’ve been fourteen now, yet his expression was grave, like that of a much older person, a little uncertain but not afraid. Never afraid. Brave, stupid kid.

Derek knew exactly where he was and why he was here. He had been born to one of the oldest, most reputable werewolf families. His mom had set up places like this, safe facilities for new alphas to recover from hyper-focussing, to learn to control it safely.

To find an emissary to anchor them.

Derek knew why Stiles was here and he growled in frustration, the noise gnawing at his eardrums like an overloud engine in the sweet silence of the sound-proof room. He winced, clapping his hands to his ears and grunting with pain, with senses that had spiked suddenly overnight into that of an alpha’s. Stronger, better, faster than the beta he’d been all his life. It was fairly common, but he’d thought for sure _Laura_ would be the one…

There was a soft, rhythmic tapping on his bicep, constant yet with all the pressure of a butterfly’s wing. As Derek focussed on it, on long fingers moving with the steady beat, he felt his focus shift toward it, until the noise in his ears lessened as touch swam to the forefront. Before it could spike as sharply as his hearing had, however, before it could overwhelm him, Stiles started to speak again, soft and coaxing, without ever stilling his fingers.

“That’s it; you can hear my heartbeat, right? Follow it for me, okay?”

And Derek realised that Stiles’s pulse was beating in the same rhythm as his fingers, that the fingers of Stiles’s free hand were pressed to his own throat to mimic the tempo.

Derek stared at him, exhaling raggedly as sweat broke out across his brow, as he struggled to follow the feel and sound of that pulse back to sanity. In the low light, he could just about make out Stiles’s eyes, whisky brown and fierce with concentration, pupils huge in the dimness. But Derek could pick out every fleck of gold and orange within the brown.

How could the hyperactive, unfocussed sheriff’s kid who couldn’t even sit still be his guide? Be his emissary? How was he meant to help Derek adjust to being an alpha? And how the hell was it working?

After a few moments, Derek was focussed enough to make out the shape of his mom sitting tucked away in the corner, watching with a visible look of relief on her face. Stiles sat back slowly, dragging a hand over his shorn head and exhaling like a man who’d just performed a death-defying stunt **.** He was so damn young. Too young.

“ _Him_?” Derek murmured to his mother, frustrated and annoyed and so damn tired. He felt like he’d been exfoliated with a sandblaster and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been lost but he felt the exhaustion he felt down to his bones. Through all that, he could not fathom the logic of his mother, his alpha tying him to this kid, who on a good day couldn’t stop himself from falling over or stop his mouth from running long enough to take a breath.

His mom cocked her head, a twitch of amusement around her tired eyes. “It was you who chose, Derek. The best emissaries in the world have been in and out of this room with no response from you.” She tilted her head to Stiles, whose face was pinched in annoyance. “He was the only one who could reach you.”

Derek looked at Stiles then, as if daring him to confirm this information, but of course the kid just spread his hands and leaned back in his chair with a cocky tilt of his chin. It was belied by the tiredness in him though, and Derek wondered how long he’d been gentling him back from hyper-focussed catatonia.  
  


“Don’t look too pleased with who your instincts chose, pal. I’m not too pleased with helping an ungrateful douchebag like you either.”

Derek glared at his mother again. “How am I supposed to work with _this_?”

She just smiled fondly. “I don’t know, Derek, I think you’re a pretty good fit.”

*

_Seven Years Later…_

Derek ducked hastily behind a tree, pressing his back to the bark as he steadied his breathing. He centred himself and stretched his hearing out into the eerily quiet night. These definitely weren’t a few lost hikers or even kids fooling around. They were good. They knew how to move to make almost no sound, moved so quietly he couldn’t hear them until he strained his senses. A beta wouldn’t have been able to hear them.

They were using something, he thought, a variant of a white-noise generator maybe, only not quite. It didn’t feel mechanical enough. He winced. Pressing the back of his head hard into the bark to ground himself, he closed his eyes as he focussed. They were downwind, so he struggled to get a good scent. No sooner had he managed to grasp a whiff of them than a musky scent reached him on the breeze and he exhaled through a low growl of frustration.

He twitched his head to the side at the approach of a much more clumsy creature than the ones invading his forest. He waited, nostrils flaring at the spike of sweat and the sound of breathing gone harsh from exertion. He lowered himself slightly, listening carefully for his original target to check their proximity. Far enough away, for now. A good enough distance not to hear him as he ducked down, darted through the soft, damp grass and slammed into the man just across the clearing.

He clamped a hand over Stiles’s mouth, smothering his shout of surprise as he bore him back into the cover of trees, pinning him to the nearest trunk.

Stiles struggled, hands flailing before flying up and going for his eyes like he’d been trained for, stopping just short of the furious red glare of Derek’s gaze with a jerk of recognition.

Listening to Stiles’s rapidly thudding heart as it beat out his thundering panic in his chest, Derek slowly removed his hand but didn’t back away from where he’d pinned Stiles to the tree.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Derek growled under his breath.

“Watching your back,” Stiles hissed, “like _partners_ do.”

“I told you to stay by the car–”

“Do you not know what I look like when I’m planning defiance by now?”

Derek scowled, his frustration building when Stiles only stared him down, blissfully silent but definitely not compliant.

It was the same argument they had every time Derek went out into the field. Beacon County was a hotspot for supernatural activity because of the nemeton, but there was a cluster of smaller packs that worked together with the Hale pack to keep it safe, along with the humans in local law enforcement who they’d had a close working relationship with since Sheriff Stilinski took charge of things. So while it was a busy job to keep Beacon County safe, the risks weren’t as high as in other territories.

Even so, whatever had snuck over the boundaries of the preserve tonight had more stealth and cunning than any bigoted anti-werewolf protestor or rogue wendigo. It got his back up in a way that made senses prickle the wrong way. It was one thing for them both to head into a risky situation prepared and with backup, it was another to drag his partner into the unknown.

“I can’t tell what we’re dealing with, it’s not safe for you. They’ve masked their scent, I can barely hear them, you need to get back to the car and call for backup.”

“I already called for backup and it’s not safe for you either if you hyper-focus and zone out without me here to anchor you, alright?”

When Derek had come into his enhanced abilities, he’d had to learn how to balance them, harness them so that he could live with them all over again. Stiles had been a huge part of that. Even now though, the enhanced surge of protectiveness he felt for the man in front of him was the hardest of all to control. He’d been raised in a big family, in a big pack and he’d still never known anyone who could push his buttons like Stiles did.

He opened his mouth but any further argument he had died as he heard it. Just the slightest movement picked up by elevated senses, easier to maintain with Stiles in his hold.

Derek straightened, pressing Stiles flatter into the cover of the tree and slowly, painfully slowly eased them down into the wider shelter of its roots. He listened, not just to the shallow sweeping sounds but to the unnatural stillness of the forest.

Stiles’s fingers slid up his arms instinctively. They traced a familiar path over his shoulders to his neck where they gripped his nape, palms cool against the heat of Derek’s skin. He tucked his head forward to rest against Derek’s.

The sound of Stiles’s heart thudding steadily now under Derek’s palm, the feel of his breath against his skin grounded him as he dared to reach a little further.

“What’ve you got there big guy?” Stiles whispered, pretty much mouthed into the minute space between them, his fingers beating a gentle staccato against his neck.

But all Derek could hear was that _nothingness_ , that empty, eternal whistle of wrongness. Everything had a smell, everything had a sound, everything had _something_ no matter what they used to try and cover it. It was there beneath it all somewhere.

“C’mon, focus for me, okay? Your sense of smell is your _numero uno_. Can you pick anything up that way?”

Derek exhaled through his frustration but Stiles’s hands were a firm anchor, holding him in place, restricting the way Derek rolled his head on his neck as an outlet to his tension. He let his eyes fall shut with no fear of his senses taking over, not with Stiles anchoring him firmly to the damp grass and his warm skin. He let his sense of smell stretch to its limits until it was a struggle to take in more than the smell of damp leaves and the residue of animals that had passed through, the coffee Stiles had drunk a few hours earlier.

He couldn’t…

“It’s there somewhere, yeah? You got this.”

He couldn’t remember the point where he’d realised Stiles’s constant chatter had become a balm to his overtaxed senses whenever they were pushed to the limit like this. He thought his past self might’ve laughed if he could’ve gone back to that first day in the rehabilitation centre, when he’d dubiously agreed to let Stiles try and guide him.

He parted his lips enough just to taste the air a little, to aid his nose. Then he caught it, just there among the green smells and the rain clinging to the clouds above. A scent like a mix of lightning and the ground after a rainstorm, a smell that had the same earthy undertones as he’d encountered before. Similar to that of Deaton’s, of Morrell’s, only more metallic, like old blood.

“Druids,” he breathed into Stiles’s space, gripping his shoulders now, the back of his neck to ground himself as his senses tried to spiral.

“Derek,” Stiles breathed carefully. “Look at me okay. I’ve got you.”

Derek’s eyes flew open, riveting to Stiles’s gaze, dark whisky, almost mahogany in the darkness. The focal point for his world, not because of any prehistoric alpha/emissary bond but because of the person Stiles had encouraged him to become. A person strong enough to handle this.

“I’ve got you,” Stiles gentled him, all under his breath and for Derek’s ears only, in a classic example of where the emissary had all of the power over even alpha strength.

Slowly, Derek felt the frenetic kaleidoscope of sensation slow, until it was within his grasp to reach out and still it fully. Only it was Stiles’s hands that halted it in place. When they did, Derek felt like he could breathe again.

“I called my dad before I followed you,” Stiles said after a moment, “he’ll be here with backup soon.”

Not soon enough.

Before Derek could open his lips to reply, a guttural scream filled the air, unhindered by magical protection and they both lurched forward in tandem. Stiles fell just behind, Derek’s outstretched arm acting as both protection and restraint, because as they moved as quietly and as quickly as they could toward the cries, toward the nemeton, the scent of blood had exploded through the air. And the screams only got louder.

When they reached the clearing, all Derek could focus on was the young man sprawled across the ground, half-sitting with his back to the stump of the nemeton and his arms bound back and around it. There was also some sort of wire around his throat, drawing thin lines of blood from his neck where it bound his head back to the tree’s remains. He moved only to scream, afraid most likely of the damage the wire would do to his throat if he struggled. Even as his eyes, wild with panic struggled to track the cloaked figure circling him.

Stiles’s hand curled around Derek’s bicep from where he crouched beside him, and when Derek met his eyes he saw the unnecessary word he mouthed. _Darach_.

Derek had seen only one before, when he’d been a child, before his mother had sealed the nemeton and had it cut down. It’d been an act to save the territory, to keep it and all the packs within safe and it’d worked, until now.

This was bigger than one alpha. He covered Stiles’s hand with his and sniffed the air, listened carefully. The pack were too far away. Then the cloaked shape, the darach froze before their victim, the light of a silver dagger glinting in the moonlight and Derek knew they had run out of time.

He shot forward, slamming into the darach with a snarl and sending the silver dagger flying. He crouched in front of the man whose screaming began anew, raw, desperate sobs that made Derek’s ears ring warningly.

“Stiles! Get the man free!” Derek called, never rising from his predatory crouch, never taking his eyes from the darach as they rose to their feet. Their mottled, ruined face betrayed the darkness within. Their eyes shone white in the clearing, glowing with power waiting to sink its teeth into the nemeton and wreak chaos.

As the darach righted themselves, Derek felt the presence that threatened to overwhelm him swell backward and then up, rearing like an oncoming tidal wave. The wrongness that had been setting his senses off the whole night was easily recognised now he knew what it was. It had felt wrong, to feel so off-balance after seven years of working with Stiles to harness it all. He wasn’t so easy to shake these days and it hadn’t made sense. Now he knew why.

“I know who you are, baby alpha, but even one of Talia Hale’s wet little pups isn’t going to stop me,” the darach snarled, surging forward and Derek pushed forward to meet them. Their hands came together, fingers curled like a threatened spider as they shot out, sending Derek hurtling across the ground, sending a spray of dirt and leaves up into the air.

Strong, but not unstoppably strong, or else she could turn him to dust just by looking at him. Derek cut a glance to the nemeton, to the shaken, scared man Stiles was untying and knew. They needed the sacrifice for power. And maybe Derek couldn’t stop even a weaker dark druid on his own, but he could stall them a little longer.

Just as Stiles removed the wire from around the captive’s neck, the darach jerked their gaze toward him and Derek knew a jolt of panic as they advanced.

Scrambling forward, on the balls of his feet and fingertips, Derek roared. The sound reverberated through his bones, through the forest until the ground and the very trees shook. He may have been an alpha but he was still part of the Hale pack, still their family and every member of either would hear him for miles.

As the sound died, the stillness that followed quivered with tangible silence and then a resonating howl answered back, then another, then another. Some closer were than others but all intermingling into an overwhelming symphony **.** The pack were coming and judging by the look of panic twisting their face, the darach hadn’t expected them to be so close. She hadn’t anticipated an alpha with direct connections to the sheriff’s office and therefore the pack. She hadn’t anticipated Derek and Stiles.

The scream of outrage that rented the air made Derek’s senses screech. He froze with the intensity, eardrums trembling warningly and set his teeth against the agony that threatened to spill out of him. Amongst it all, Derek swore he heard Stiles call him, swore he heard the world swallowed up in the piercing cry of the dark druid as it consumed him entirely.

He felt cold all over, numb, like pins and needles only _everywhere_ , even in his head, all except for the agony in his ears where his hearing had hyper-focussed, caught by the darach’s call when his hearing had been extended toward the call of the pack. He felt like he was sinking eternally, like he couldn’t grasp air but he wasn’t dying without it. His eyes stung with lack of moisture, his mouth dry for lack of spit.

Then it all came crashing back with the force of a freight train. It slammed into him, sending him staggering, floundering back into awareness. He stumbled hard to the ground, scrambling back to his knees as he tried to right himself in the rush of adrenaline and disorientation.

Stiles was there, kneeling in the dirt beside him and clutching his face, tapping gently. When Derek’s eyes focussed on him, Stiles’s expression, pale, gaunt with pain seemed to settle. There was a moment where he was overcome with relief, eyes shining brightly with unshed tears. He touched his nose gently to Derek’s, letting scent and touch anchor him more firmly to the present. Then he sagged into Derek’s arms, collapsing into a limp, shaking mess.

Long fingers gripped his shirt, catching skin and Derek’s brow furrowed as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Blood bloomed on Stiles’s stomach, near his side, and Derek could just see the jut of silver blade that pierced through. The darach’s knife.

“A willing sacrifice is always so much more potent a conduit,” the darach grinned. The nemeton behind her was vacant, wire and rope loose about the base, the frightened young man nowhere in sight. “That blade was meant for you, but an alpha without his emissary is like a ship without anchor. With enough of a push…” The darach drifted closer, radiating wrongness, making the metallic scent of pain and blood rising from Stiles intensify tenfold until Derek felt dizzy with it. “…you’ll just float away, won’t you?”

Stiles’s trembling fingers curled tighter in his shirt, digging hard into his chest, grounding him even as his face grew paler in the moonlight.

Suddenly, a tree branch swung through the air, crashing into the side of the druid’s head, making them stagger, stunned as they turned enough to glimpse the guy from the gas station, their almost victim. Before the darach could blink, Derek dove for their throat. He sank his fangs in deep, twisting his head, savaging their mangled throat until he was sure they were downed.

The howls of the pack cut through the trees again, so close now he felt his skin humming with their presence. Instinct consumed him, with the scent of his whole world’s blood in his nose from just a few feet away; he didn’t unlock his jaws from the threat until he heard their heart stop beating.

*

“You’ve just been stabbed straight through your side, Stiles, you are _not_ walking up three flights of stairs,” Derek groused as he got the wheelchair out of the back of the sheriff’s cruiser and wheeled it around to the side-door where the sheriff was already trying to help Stiles out.

“I can at least walk to the elevator,” Stiles protested, even through the wrinkle of pain creasing his brow.

“No,” both Derek and the sheriff said in unison, coaxing him into the wheelchair.

Stiles scowled at them both. “If I’d known you two would always form a team against me then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have let you get so close.”

The sheriff beamed winningly at him as he held the door open for Derek to wheel Stiles into their apartment building.

Derek put Stiles’s medication away while letting Stiles secretly enjoy his dad’s fussing as he settled on the couch. When he walked back into their open plan kitchen/dining/living area, it was to the sheriff setting a soda and a sandwich onto Stiles’s lap.

“…as you’re told for once and keep off your feet like the doctor said?”

“Will you keep off the red meat like _your_ doctor said,” Stiles retorted, but the teasing note filled Derek with reassurance that he really was okay.

The sheriff gave his son an exasperated but loving look. “Derek, your ball, buddy,” he said, kissing Stiles on the top of the head. “I’m gonna grab you guys some groceries and stuff.”

“I will do a random glucose test on you to make sure you didn’t have anything from the Dunkin Donuts next-door!” Stiles called after his dad as the door closed.

Derek set the coffee pot to brew and then joined Stiles on the couch, where Stiles wriggled his socked toes under Derek’s legs to keep them warm as Stiles channel-hopped.

“He loves you more than me. Why wasn’t I warned this would happen when we entered this relationship?” Stiles mumbled without any real annoyance.

Derek smirked, tired but relaxing at last now they were both back in their own space, surrounded by the sights and scents of the intermingled life they shared. “You can’t really warn someone about something you don’t realise is happening until it already is,” he mused, letting his eyes fall shut. He tipped his head to rest on the back of the couch, arm stretched out so he could brush Stiles’s nape with his fingers absently.

Between worrying and the hospital runs and the statement he had to give to law enforcement and his mother about the darach, he was shattered. But they’d saved that guy and probably a lot more people who would’ve been hurt if the darach had achieved their goal.

“We did good,” he murmured, almost without meaning to into the safe space of the home they’d built together.

Stiles grinned tiredly around his soda. “We make a pretty good team, huh?”

“You don’t have to get rushed to hospital to prove that _every_ time, you know.”

Wriggling his toes under Derek’s warm thigh, Stiles offered him a soft smile that was part apology, part pleased. “Three times in seven years is not every time–”

“Three times in the three years we’ve been working in the sheriff’s department,” Derek grumbled, only to feel Stiles rub his thumb feather-light across Derek’s forearm, just enough to let the hairs there prickle gently.

“Just because you’re the alpha doesn’t mean you don’t need saving too sometimes,” Stiles murmured softly. “There’s never a scenario where I see someone coming for you and I don’t step in the way, okay? And I know it’s the same for you. That’s just the way it is and sometimes things are gonna get hairy, living in the nemeton’s back yard, but I wanted to be a deputy since I could wear my dad’s badge around the house, okay? This was my future even before you, you don’t get to keep all the blame for yourself. We share the blame just like everything else.”

Derek’s nostrils flared as he exhaled, closing his eyes for a minute before grasping Stiles’s wrist and leaning toward it to brush his lips across his knuckles. He stayed like that for a beat, just breathing.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

The fingers of Stiles’s free hand stroked through his hair, cradling him gently as he allowed himself to free-fall after holding himself together for the last few days. “It’s funny how I’m the one that tells you to stay back, but I’m the one always getting left behind to deal with the chaos.”

Stiles snorted, scratching softly at his scalp before tugging gently until Derek was lying alongside him on the sofa, careful of Stiles’s wounded side.

“You wouldn’t love me half as much if I didn’t bug the hell out of you,” Stiles mused as Derek snuffled into his neck. But he felt Stiles relax too in a way he hadn’t since he’d come to in the hospital, in spite of his usual constant chatter. “I’m never going anywhere without you, bud, okay?”

Derek hummed in acknowledgement, even as his senses settled and he started to drift. He brushed his lips across Stiles’s brow, then his lips, even as he smoothed his fingers under Stiles’s collar to touch bare skin and draw away any pain that the medication couldn’t touch.

By the time the sheriff came back with their groceries, they were both fast asleep. Stiles’s proximity drawing a tired Derek in so close even his senses didn’t alert him to his return.

*

By the time Stiles was back on his feet, spring was kissing the edges of summer and so as they made their way along Derek’s favourite trail through the preserve.

Stiles was complaining heavily.

“I’m literally the walking wounded here. Now the sweating wounded!”

“I’m carrying the bag,” Derek said dismissively. “The doctor said you needed some exercise and you’ve only been walking five minutes. Hurry up.”

Stiles hated hiking and they only really did it when Derek needed to clear his senses or ‘sensory reset’ as Stiles called it. In truth, Stiles always ended up enjoying himself too once they got to their usual spot.

It was a little outcropping surrounded by a copse of trees. It was on Hale land, strictly speaking so they were never disturbed and the view looking out across the town seemed to always settle the riled wolf in his core. Stiles thought it was something about being able to survey the territory without having to defend his senses from everything that came with it,.

Stiles sprawled out on the blanket Derek had brought, starfished in the sun and breathing exaggeratedly.

Derek grinned, pulling a bottle of _Gatorade_ from his bag and passing it to Stiles who drank half the bottle in one go.

“They always say love hurts,” he lamented as he got his breath back. “You’d think all the physicals I have to go through for work or running around with a werewolf twenty-four seven would make me able to handle a little 10 minute hike.”

Derek sat beside him, toeing off his shoes and digging his bare feet into the grass as he tugged Stiles’s sneakers off too, even as Stiles kept talking.

“…suppose a few weeks recovering from a minor stab-wound can set your fitness back. I was _not_ doing Pilates though; Cora would never let me live it down if she found out.”

Derek ducked his head as he smiled, massaging Stiles’s dry, warm feet for a second, listening to the breeze through the trees, the way Stiles’s heartbeat steadily evened out. He waited for the sharp, acrid smell of any hint of pain but while Stiles seemed worn out, he wasn’t hurting.

Shrugging off his shirt, Derek sprawled out next to him and closed his eyes, inhaling nothing but Stiles and the fresh air.

His skin felt like it was glowing after a few minutes out in the clear air and sunlight. They’d picked a good day for it.

After a little while, he realised Stiles had fallen quiet and turned his head to see him watching him. Stiles’s lips quirked, his eyes shining amber with mischief and sunshine as he slid a hand across Derek’s bare stomach, just resting it there.

“What?” Derek asked, his own lips twitching but Stiles shook his head.

“Just you,” he mused. “You ready?” He propped himself up on one elbow to look down at Derek, letting his long fingers trail up to rest over his heart while he felt for his own pulse with his free hand in his neck. He tapped his fingers on Derek’s chest gently, letting them fall into the rhythm of his own pulse. “Focus in on it, okay?”

As if Derek ever _wasn’t_ focussed in on it. He could follow Stiles’s heartbeat from a block away if he wanted to.

“You got it?”

Derek nodded and then closed his eyes. He knew the score.

“Good,” Stiles breathed gently. “Let’s dial it up real slow, all the way to the top okay? One step at a time. We’ll do smell first.”

Derek exhaled slowly, keeping everything focussed on the fingertips beating out a rhythm on his sternum. “You, your shampoo, our body wash...”

“Good, okay, now a little further. Slowly stretch out and tell me what you find.”

He reached beyond the trees, the little river beneath the cliff, all the way to the road where he could smell a trucker taking a smoking break at the roadside. He felt himself go deep there, a little hazy around the edges with how far he could reach but then Stiles brought him right back, nice and slow. When he refocused himself, it was using Stiles as a baseline, letting everything fall back into place around the hand and voice anchoring him in place.

“And now?” Stiles prompted gently.

“Just you now,” Derek murmured. Stiles’s eyes were bright when he opened his own, his tongue sweeping across his lips.

“Unlucky. You should file for a new guide, one that can sit still and keep his mouth shut for five seconds.”

Derek growled softly, catching the hand resting on his chest. He brought it up to scent at the knuckles. He loved Stiles’s hands.

He thought back to the scared, newly presented alpha who’d not even believed in himself, much less the sheriff’s kid who couldn’t sit still. Stiles was just the same, if a little more confident in his ability to handle Derek’s moods as well as his hyper-focussing. Somewhere along the line he’d given Derek confidence in himself too. He’d given him a career and a purpose and all while making Derek fall head over heels for him.

Back when he was newly presented and scared and lost, he hadn’t recognised the strength of the boy that at his bedside, the one that had pulled him back from the edge of an abyss. People were always in awe of an alpha’s abilities, but it was Stiles that was the incredible one. And Derek got to spend the rest of his life with him.

“If I did that, then I might actually have to do some talking,” he said softly, biting the tip of Stiles’s forefinger. “People might realise how boring I am.”

Stiles laughed gently, climbing over Derek to steal a kiss from his mouth. “So boring, I’m falling asleep right now.” He kissed Derek again, slower, deeper, more soundly than before and when he drew back Derek gave him a lazy, contented smile.

“Blue Gatorade and cornbread,” he whispered into the minute space between them.

Stiles grinned. “Oh, skipping ahead to exercise your sense of taste, huh?”

“Mmm,” Derek agreed, leaning in to worry at the edge of Stiles’s jaw, then behind his ear. “And I’m starting here.”

Stiles’s answering chuckle simmered into a low moan as Derek rolled him onto the blanket.


End file.
